[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 109 (Friday, June 30, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1380-E1381]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                          A MAN OF TWO WORLDS

                                 ______


                       HON. SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, June 30, 1995
  Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Speaker, an aide to General Washington remarked 
that the different tribes of Indians ``say there never was such a man 
and never will be another.''
  They were talking about Sir William Johnson (1715-1774), a man of two 
worlds, who served as the King of England's agent among the Six Nations 
and a celebrated Mohawk Iroquois chief.
  He was a central character in the struggle for survival among 
pioneers and Indians in the northern frontier of colonial America. He 
as born in Ireland and came with few resources to America where he 
managed his uncle's estates on the New York frontier. Due to his toil, 
vision, and leadership, the region developed by attracting more 
immigrants and exploiting its rich soil and strategic location, despite 
arduous winters, exotic plagues, trading disputes, and the guerrilla 
warfare that threatened every living being on that frontier.
  A prominent military achievement in his career was his building of an 
alliance among poor farmers and Iroquois that, against all odds, 
defeated the professional French armies at the Battle of Lake George 
and helped the English win control of North America in the French and 
Indian War (1754-1763).
  Author Robert Moss is also a man of two worlds. He is a writer with a 
talent for bringing an important--and almost forgotten--part of our 
history back to life. He completed an historical novel entitled, ``The 
Firekeeper,'' which will be published by Tom Doherty for Forge Books on 
July 5. Through his narratives, which are backed by extensive 
historical research, the images and emotions of our ancestors are 
requickened in a high-intensity drama. He ``makes the bones live'' by 
remaining faithful to documented academic sources yet granting himself 
``license to drive a horse and carriage through the gaps.''
  In cooperation with British Ambassador Sir Robin Renwick, Maurice 
Sonnenberg, and United South and Eastern Tribes President Keller George 
Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Alfonse D'Amato, Representative 
Michael McNulty, and me, Forge publisher Tom Doherty will host a 
reception on July 11, the anniversary of Sir William's death, in the 
Capitol honoring Robert Moss and his upcoming publication that ought to 
be destined for the best seller list.
  There is a vignette from Robert Moss's book that helps us understand 
Johnson and his special role among the pioneers and the Indians. 
Johnson is fighting to win the favor of the Mohawk leaders, 
particularly the ruling clanmothers. But the Mohawks are suffering from 
an outbreak of smallpox that has been introduced to them through 
infected blankets given to them by unscrupulous land speculators, and 
the women are understandably increasingly wary of white influence on 
their lands and way of life. Johnson is trying to inoculate the diverse 
ethnic peoples of the valley against the disease, and he offers to 
``take the seed of the white death'' into his own body and show the 
Indians that it will help them live.
  After Johnson rose in influence in the Iroquois Confederacy, earning 
the title ``The Firekeeper,'' he also gained recognition as the sole 
superintendent of Indian Affairs in North America for the British 
crown, and was awarded a patent of baronetcy. Truly a man of two 
worlds, by the conclusion of the French and Indian wars, Johnson 
secured on his own
 terms, a moment of peace in the valley. ``I will be Sir William * * * 
but I will bear my own arms, and my supporters will bear my own crest, 
not a hand-me-down from the users of Ireland.''

  The need to weave a fabric from the world of our past into present is 
imperative. As this book goes to press, many of the historic resources, 
including battlefields, forts, homes, and buildings that are mentioned 
in this drama, are threatened by local, State, and Federal budgetary 
stringency. It is necessary to inspire citizens to action and form 
partnerships to help protect valuable sites that serve to instruct our 
citizens about the Nation's past. In our own Mohawk Valley, a nonprofit 
organization is being developed, the Northern Frontier Project, by 
visionaries who have found in the sacrifices of our ancestral past a 
pathway for a better future. This project will educate others about our 
history and promote economic development and tourism opportunities that 
will help us retain and enhance our many sites and resources.

[[Page E1381]]

  I consider myself one of the luckiest Members of Congress, to have a 
Robert Moss, a man of two worlds, who's able to travel among the spirit 
world and the real world, the past and the present, to tell the stories 
of our heroes and villains, of virtue and vice. He's not just 
chronicling history, he's bringing it to life through remarkable 
stories about an underreported part of America, and helping people to 
understand events, victories, and tragedies that are essential to 
understanding who we are and what cooperation among cultures it took to 
get us here.
  Lastly, with cooperation again in the valley, we can dream about all 
the possibilities that we can achieve. Thank you Robert Moss. The 
people of the valleys salute you and your work and wish you that 
greatest success.
  I am including for the Record ``The World of the Firekeeper,'' which 
was prepared by Robert Moss for this event.
                      The World of the Firekeeper

       The North-East frontier was the decisive frontier in 
     American history. In the 1600s and 1700s, New York, New 
     England, and Pennsylvania were the scene of three gigantic 
     and often tragic struggles: between the newcomers and the 
     native inhabitants, between the British and French empires, 
     and between Loyalists and Patriots. The battles that were 
     fought here--especially at Saratoga and Oriskany, in upstate 
     New York, in 1777--decided the fate of the American 
     Revolution and opened the way to the West.
       In many ways, it was on this first frontier, already 150 
     years old by the end of the French and Indian Wars, that a 
     distinctively American identity was born--diverse, self-
     reliant, impatient with the Old World conceptions of 
     inherited rank and station. The first wave of mass 
     immigration from Europe came from Europe to New York in 1710, 
     with the arrival of 3,000 Palatine Germans. Colonial New York 
     and Pennsylvania became the first ``melting pots,'' with the 
     rising tide of immigrants from many nations.
       On the Northern Frontier, the pioneer settlers encountered 
     two families of Indian nations: the Iroquoians and the 
     Algonkians. Before first contact with Europeans, five 
     Iroquois nations, guided by a prophet called the Peacemaker, 
     had come together to form a great Confederacy whose 
     constitution impressed Ben Franklin so powerfully that he 
     recommended it as a model to the divided colonists. Renowned 
     for their oratory and statecraft, feared by their enemies as 
     ruthless and courageous fighters, the Iroquois commanded two 
     vital river-roads through the forests that were all-important 
     in early trade and warfare: the Hudson-Champlain route 
     between New York and Canada, and the Mohawk River-Oswego 
     route that led from the English colonies towards the Great 
     Lakes and the North American heartland.
       The warrior Iroquois were also a matriarchal society. A 
     Mohawk myth recalls how a woman led the people's long 
     migration across the north of the continent to an area near 
     modern Quebec City and finally down into the Mohawk Valley. 
     The clanmothers picked the chiefs, and the women occasionally 
     ``de-horned'' a chief who failed in his duties. The women 
     insisted on the ancient teaching that a chief must consider 
     the consequences of his actions down to the seventh 
     generation after himself.
       But the arrival of the Europeans threw traditional Iroquois 
     society into turmoil. The newcomers brought firearms and 
     metal tools; it became vital to have these. The newcomers 
     created a new appetite for alcohol, which was previously 
     unknown to the Woodland Indians, and which they had little 
     ability to metabolize. The traders wanted furs--and 
     increasingly, land--in return for guns and goods and liquor. 
     The Iroquois were soon caught up in savage warfare with 
     neighboring tribes over the control of the fast-diminishing 
     supplies of beaver and other furs. Their losses in battle 
     were less devastating than the terrible inroads of alien 
     diseases--smallpox, influenza, and measles--to which the 
     Indians had never been exposed and for which traditional 
     healers had no remedies.
       By the early 1700s, caught up in a struggle for survival, 
     the Iroquois were deeply divided. Should they side with the 
     British or the French, or stand neutral, in the conflict 
     between world empires that was now being played out on 
     American soil? Should they reject their ancient spiritual 
     traditions--which taught the necessary balance between 
     humans, the earth and the spirit worlds and the supreme 
     importance of dreaming--or follow the God of the foreigners 
     who came with cannons and horses?
       Into this scene walked William Johnson (1715-1774), one of 
     the most extraordinary men in American history. His Irish 
     roots and his rise to power and fortune on the first frontier 
     are described in vivid detail in ``The Firekeeper.'' Johnson 
     came to the New World, like so many other immigrants, in 
     hopes of getting ahead. Starting out as a trader and farm 
     manager in the Mohawk Valley, he eventually succeeded in 
     making himself one of the richest men in the colonies. 
     Through fair dealings and by immersing himself in their lives 
     and customs, Johnson developed a personal influence among the 
     Iroquois that enabled him to persuade them to fight on the 
     British side in the French and Indian wars. This was a 
     decisive contribution to the eventual British victory, since 
     the British never won a significant battle in the American 
     woodlands without the help of Iroquois scouts and 
     auxiliaries. As an amateur general, Johnson led a restive 
     force of New England militiamen and Iroquois rangers to 
     victory over a professional French commander at the Battle of 
     Lake George.
       But the significance of Johnson's achievement, in the 
     history of the American frontier, goes much deeper. Though he 
     became the King's Superintendent of Indians, he was as much 
     the Iroquois agent to the colonists as the King's agent among 
     the Indians. Indeed, he became an adopted Mohawk warchief 
     before he held a commission from the Crown. He championed the 
     Iroquois against land-robbers and racist officials, like the 
     British general who advocated killing off the Indians en 
     masse during Pontiac's revolt by spreading smallpox among 
     them with the aid of infected hospital blankets. Johnson 
     promoted Indian school and inoculation against the smallpox 
     virus, once the method (first observed in Africa) became 
     known in the colonies. He encouraged Iroquois women to go 
     into business as traders. He introduced new crops and methods 
     of agriculture. In his later life, with a Mohawk consort--
     known to history as Molly Brant--at his side, Johnson 
     presided over a remarkably successful experiement in 
     interracial cooperation.
       Johnson's homes in the Mohawk Valley--Fort Johnson and 
     Johnson Hall, both memorably described in ``The Firekeeper'' 
     and ``Fire Along the Sky''--are well-preserved and open to 
     visitors, as are many of the other sites of frontier New 
     York, such as Fort William Henry (scene of the Battle of Lake 
     George), Fort Ticonderoga, the Saratoga battlefield, the Old 
     Stone Fort at Schoharie, Fort Plain, Fort Stanwix, and Old 
     Fort Niagara. Sadly, funding problems have led to the--
     hopefully only temporary--closing of the Oriskany battlefield 
     site, scene of the first American civil war as well as a 
     critical turning point in the American Revolution. Budget 
     constraints threaten other sites. As Robert Moss comments, 
     ``I hope my historical novels will help revive public 
     interest in the places where--in so many ways--America was 
     born. The Iroquois say that a tree without roots cannot 
     stand. I believe they are right.''
       Asked to explain how The Firekeeper differs from previous 
     accounts of the North-East Frontier, Moss explains:
       ``First, I tried to give the women their revenge. Amongst 
     white Europeans, the 18th century was pretty much a man's 
     century. But the dominant character in ``The Firekeeper,'' in 
     many ways, is Catherine Weissenberg. She is a historical 
     figure--a Palatine refugee who came to the colonies as an 
     indentured servant and became Johnson's life partner (though 
     never his wife) and the mother of his white children. Another 
     poserful character in the book is Island Woman, a member of a 
     lineage of women healers who became Mother of the Wolf Clan 
     of the Mohawk Nation. Through her eyes, we see the women's 
     mysteries and the reverence for women within a native culture 
     whose primary pronoun is she not he.
       ``Second, in the Firekeeper I have married executive 
     archival research to oral tradition, both from Native 
     Americans and from descendants of Valley settlers. To borrow 
     a phrase from the anthropologists, I have ``upstreamed' what 
     I have learned about native culture and spirituality today to 
     help illuminate how things may have been then.
       ``Third, I have tried to go inside the mindset--the 
     interior worlds--of different people and peoples. In ``The 
     Firekeeper,'' you can read a blow-by-blow account of a 
     battle, a traders' sharping, or a machiavellian plot laid in 
     a back room. Or you can find yourself deep inside the realms 
     of the shaman, for whom the dream world is the real world and 
     spirits walk and talk at the drop of a feather. I tried to 
     make the book as multi-demensional as its players.''
     

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